Great Things Happen When You Get A Dozen Professionals Together to Talk about Career Change

For two Saturday sessions (3 hours each) in April, I had the pleasure of facilitating a dozen great professionals through the beta version of my Six-Hour Career Energize program. This program is built on my Career Reinvent Framework and is intended to help individuals jump-start finding “next” in their careers. This was a beta because it was the first time I applied my well-developed materials in a shorter (jump-start) format. Our cohort included accomplished professionals from all sectors and all career stages. One member volunteered that at the age of 80, the only criterion he was concerned about was moving fast! (This individual’s experience and wisdom helped everyone in the group.)

Six Big Insights from the Six-Hour Career Energize Program Beta

1. Fear is a factor when it comes to changing career direction.

Fear and particularly fear of taking on extreme risk, was described as one of the primary obstacles to making a career change. No one wants to invite financial strain into their lives, and the group agreed that finding a way to pivot without taking on excess risk was a priority. (Note: the Career Reinvent Framework is a blend of design thinking and agile project management intended to help minimize risk.)

2. Everyone has a personal timeline for making a change.

Some individuals are motivated to do this sooner than later. Others are taking a long view, preparing for retirement from one role, and looking to shift to something in their next form of career that draws upon their accumulated wisdom and leverages their skills. 

3. Career change might be compared to selecting flavors of ice cream or gelato

Our “flavors” exercise generated a lot of energy. In this activity, I compare a dozen forms of possible career shifts to flavors of ice cream. (There was one who refused ice cream but played as long as they could use gelato flavors.) While one flavor might be a radical makeover, another might focus on shifting to a like-kind role in a different industry. There are a variety of flavors that emphasize entrepreneurial ventures, with the most common being a side hustle of some sort. Several individuals ended up with combinations of flavors they find appealing. We called this having an ice cream sundae of attractive career shifts. The exercise is an excellent prelude to beginning to identify potential ideas.

4. It’s important to tune into you as part of finding your “next”

The group found the self-discovery exercises challenging but valuable. In my process, I encourage individuals to spend some time initially tuning into themselves in search of pointers to possible next career moves. From asking for input from current and past colleagues about their perception of the individual’s strengths and impact to taking time to reflect on the moments that individuals believe they’ve been at their best, these are powerful prompts for us. One of the fan favorites is “What’s your Ted Talk?” where I encourage individuals to describe what they want to share with the world. While the self-discovery exercises don’t necessarily offer answers, they are invaluable in providing pointers to situations and activities that might fit us for this next stage.

5. It’s sometimes hard to generate ideas.

For many individuals navigating what I call the “I want to do something different, I just don’t know what” phase of a career change, ideas are like gold nuggets—precious but sometimes hard to find. I guide individuals through a divergent thinking exercise as they are challenged to build their Big Ideas List. My goal for everyone is to come up with at least 40 ideas—unfiltered, uncensored, raw ideas. Some people come up with 80, and others 4.

Both extremes pose challenges, but overall, having too many ideas is better than too few. This is where the self-discovery exercises pay dividends. Several group members tapped into childhood and school-age ideas. One of my favorite examples of how this works came from the two people who indicated growing up, they always wanted to be astronauts. While that spacecraft may have launched (bad pun!), the group quickly offered ideas and even networking resources for these individuals to explore getting involved in the burgeoning commercial space industry! Wow!

6. No one pivots alone.

I know from experience that part of the magic of getting a group together to talk about their ideas for career pivot is that they help each other. This happened repeatedly, with one of the powerful moments occurring when the group helped an individual rethink why his favorite idea kept scoring low during our prioritization exercise. Another occurred for our wisest group member when he recognized an approach to scaling his societally important idea by deploying it via groups versus one-on-one interaction. 

The Bottom Line for Now

As we wrapped our sessions up, explored the program’s evergreen e-resource portal, and talked about a check-in event in one month, one of the individuals offered a great comment. “I’m not ready to do this now, but just knowing there’s a process I can use to reduce the risks and improve my odds of success is incredibly valuable.” It turns out there is a process for turning daydreams into reality without jumping off a cliff. 

Art's Signature

 

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Thanks to this great group for participating in the beta version of this program! I will soon launch the next version of Six-Hour Career Energize for Summer and Fall cohorts. Drop me a note if you want to be informed once these dates are available.